John
Sebastian is a
performer at home both with a band and as an unaccompanied (or just
slightly accompanied) singer-guitarist. It wasn't unusual, then, for
his first live recording to spotlight his voice and acoustic guitar,
the only other instrumentation supplied by piano and (on just a few
tracks) guitar-bass. With an unusually generous running time (for a
single-disc vinyl LP) of 51 minutes, 1971's Cheapo Cheapo Productions Presents Real
Live gave listeners a chance to hear him offer an assortment of
Lovin' Spoonful tunes, rock'n'roll oldies, and folk/blues covers in a
concert setting. Of course, by the time it came out, millions of
listeners had already heard some acoustic solo John Sebastian on the Woodstock soundtrack, which opened
with his performance of "I Had a Dream." For such a rootsy and
no-nonsense album, however, a considerable amount of music industry
nonsense was involved in sparking the idea to make a live recording of
the material.

When
John
Sebastian began recording as a solo artist at Reprise Records, his
career was impeded by competing, unauthorized albums issued at the same
time by MGM. His first LP, 1970's John
B. Sebastian (also reissued on CD by Collectors' Choice Music),
was issued not only by Reprise, but also (with a different cover) by
MGM, the parent company of the label with which Sebastian had recorded
as part of the Lovin' Spoonful. MGM contended that the Lovin' Spoonful
owed the company another album, which gave it the right to put out this
Sebastian material. While most of the copies of John B. Sebastian in circulation
were on Reprise rather than MGM, the imbroglio curtailed his efforts to
get his solo career off the ground, confusing the marketplace and also
delaying release of the authorized version of the LP.

MGM, however, was not done trying to claim sales on
unauthorized Sebastian releases. A few months after John B. Sebastian came out, the
label issued John Sebastian Live,
which was not only released without the permission of the artist, but
also recorded at a concert that John had no intention of making the
basis of a commercial LP. "You have to remember the setting of what I
call The White Album,"
emphasizes Sebastian when discussing the MGM live release. "It's white,
with one little picture of me. I never approved that album, it was
never presented to me as a possible release; it was done like thieves
in the night. It's just so silly, and so wrong. In the scheme of
things, it ain't killing little tiny baby squirrels, but it's really
nasty, and it really screwed with my career."

John further explains, "I had a performance [at]
what we called the Swamp Festival, a big festival sort of trying to
imitate Woodstock that happened outside of New Orleans. [My wife]
Catherine and I went, and Mountain did it, so I was there with my old
pal Felix Pappalardi, and we were having a jolly good time. Somewhere
around like eight or nine in the evening, somebody said, 'You know,
we've got 300 people in a field in Woodstock.' Somebody, I forget who
it was, couldn't do it. 'Could you come and play a set tomorrow morning
for these people?' So it involved immediately jumping onto a series of
planes, kind of all-night style. This is not how you'd prepare for a
live album that you really wanted to represent yourself with."

Nonetheless, this is the gig that was recorded for
the MGM album, as Sebastian continues: "We go to a little field,
somewhere here in Woodstock—I'm not entirely sure where it is, even
though I've lived here for over 30 years. They didn't have anything
like the right amplifier. All they had was a Fender Champ, so I did the
set with that. As far as an indication of 'how is Sebastian after you
keep him up all night and throw him out on stage and see if he can stay
on his feet'—okay, maybe it's pretty good on that level. But that's
about the only level it's good, because I would have prepared much
more. Cheapo Cheapo was an
attempt to distinguish it from this phony live album that had been just
put out without any responsibility to the artist. I think [MGM] just
tried to grab hold and see if they could hang on. I was one of the last
[of the artists that had been on the label] floating as they were
sinking."

Recorded live at four California shows, Cheapo Cheapo Presents Real Live
was done with more care than the unauthorized concert LP. Accompanying
Sebastian's voice and acoustic guitar on piano was Paul Harris, who'd
played on much of John B. Sebastian
(as well as sessions by numerous other major artists of the era,
including the Doors, Judy Collins, and Nick Drake). Producing was Paul
Rothchild, and engineering was Fritz Richmond, two more old friends who
had likewise been engaged in those capacities for John B. Sebastian. Dan Armstrong
played guitar-bass on "Fishin' Blues," "My Gal," and "Make Up Your
Mind," but otherwise Sebastian and Harris were carrying the show.

Sebastian has high praise for everyone in the
supporting cast on Cheapo Cheapo,
starting with Harris. "Paul was such a great player, and also a guy who
understood the idioms that I was moving through," he enthuses. "He had
some skills that are pretty unusual. Not every pianist can fingerpick a
piano." On the recording end, "It was sort of the dawn of live
recording, and Fritz and Paul [Rothchild] really did a great job. Fritz
and I had a friendship that had started back when we were both still
learning how to smoke dope. Knowing that a guy you consider one of your
best friends is the guy that is committing some of this stuff to tape
at the time, it's a very, very comfortable feeling; it gave me a
tremendous amount of confidence. I benefited from his professional
expertise, but also as a friend, I always felt I was getting a straight
answer from Fritz. In some ways, Fritz was beginning to substitute for
Zally [Yanovsky, lead guitarist in the Lovin' Spoonful]. Because in
times before, my kind of confidante that would give it to me straight
was always Zally."

The songs selected for Cheapo Cheapo covered some of the
more popular ("Younger Generation," "Darlin' Be Home Soon," "Younger
Girl," "Nashville Cats") and more obscure ("Fishin' Blues,"
"Lovin' You," "My Gal," "Amy's Theme") songs he'd recorded with the
Lovin' Spoonful. Even the songs that had been done by the Spoonful
sounded markedly different in this setting, however, one example being
"Amy's Theme," which had been given a fairly lush orchestral production
in its original version (on the soundtrack to the Francis Ford Coppola
movie You're a Big Boy Now).
"After all, its subtitle has always been 'Lonely'," John explains. "So
there was something a little more
lonely about doing it [with] one guitar and whistling."

There were also as an assortment of covers that
delved into his folk, country, and jug band influences. "Mobile Line"
had been recorded not long before Cheapo
Cheapo by the Holy Modal Rounders, though Sebastian first heard
it from Mark Spoelstra. "Irene," better known as "Goodnight Irene," had
been a chart-topper in 1950 for the Weavers. "Rooty-Toot" came from
Sebastian's cousin John Lewis, and "Waiting for a Train," though
primarily identified with country great Jimmie Rodgers, was actually
learned by John from Jerry Lee Lewis's cover version. In the midst of
all this were two of the mid-'50s rock'n'roll classics that Sebastian
had grown up with, "Blue Suede Shoes" and the doo wop ballad "In the
Still of the Night."

"When you go out and you do a live show, your main
responsibility is to let people hear the things that they came to
hear," reflects John. "That was simply the set that I would do in those
days. Many of those sort of old-time songs were not a regular overnight
occurrence, but were rather a way for me to surprise myself a little
bit every night and do something different. One night I'd be imitating
Johnny Cash, and another I'd do 'In the Still of the Night' to remind
people that I come out of a doo wop tradition in a weird way. Growing
up in Little Italy [in New York City], that was pretty inescapable."

Having both paid homage to his roots and offered a
live recording to counteract an unauthorized LP, Sebastian was now
ready to resume his activities in the studio without the obstruction of
contractual hassles. The result was The
Four of Us, issued just five months after Cheapo Cheapo's March 1971 release,
and also reissued on CD by Collectors' Choice Music. -- Richie
Unterberger